In the mean time, the young officer, who had disappeared in the
shrubbery, whether he had or had not been a spectator of the scene,
exhibited some signs of agitation. He walked rapidly on, occasionally
switching the air with a wand of willow, from which he had impatiently
plucked the leaves, through an alley of ceanothus, until he reached a
little thicket of evergreens, which seemed to oppose his further
progress. Turning to one side, however, he quickly found an entrance
to a labyrinthine walk, which led him at last to an open space and a
rustic summer-house that stood beneath a gnarled and venerable
pear-tree. The summerhouse was a quaint stockade of dark madrono
boughs thatched with red-wood bark, strongly suggestive of deeper
woodland shadow. But in strange contrast, the floor, table, and
benches were thickly strewn with faded rose-leaves, scattered as if in
some riotous play of children. Captain Carroll brushed them aside
hurriedly with his impatient foot, glanced around hastily, then threw
himself on the rustic bench at full length and twisted his mustache
between his nervous fingers. Then he rose as suddenly, with a few
white petals impaled on his gilded spurs and stepped quickly into the
open sunlight.
He must have been mistaken! Everything was quiet around him, the
far-off sound of wheels in the avenue came faintly, but nothing more.
His eye fell upon the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was
struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all
proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron
bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to
interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in
bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the
summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind
it into a long undulation, on the crest of which the same singular
profusion of rose-leaves were scattered. It struck him as being
strangely like a gigantic grave, and that the same idea had occurred to
the fantastic dispenser of the withered flowers. He was still looking
at it, when a rustle in the undergrowth made his heart beat
expectantly. A slinking gray shadow crossed the undulation and
disappeared in the thicket. It was a coyote. At any other time the
extraordinary appearance of this vivid impersonation of the wilderness,
so near a centre of human civilization and habitation, would have
filled him with wonder. But he had room for only a single thought now.
Would SHE come?
Five minutes passed. He no longer waited in the summer-house, but
paced impatiently before the entrance to the labyrinth. Another five
minutes. He was deceived, undoubtedly. She and her sisters were
probably waiting for him and laughing at him on the lawn. He ground
his heel into the clover, and threw his switch into the thicket. Yet
he would give her one--only one moment more.
"Captain Carroll!"
The voice had been and was to HIM the sweetest in the world; but even a
stranger could not have resisted the spell of its musical inflection.
He turned quickly. She was advancing towards him from the summer-house.
"Did you think I was coming that way--where everybody could follow me?"
she laughed, softly. "No; I came through the thicket over there,"
indicating the direction with her flexible shoulder, "and nearly lost
my slipper and my eyes--look!" She threw back the inseparable lace
shawl from her blond head, and showed a spray of myrtle clinging like a
broken wreath to her forehead. The young officer remained gazing at
her silently.
"I like to hear you speak my name," he said, with a slight hesitation
in his breath. "Say it again."
"Car-roll, Car-roll, Car-roll," she murmured gently to herself two or
three times, as if enjoying her own native trilling of the r's. "It's a
pretty name. It sounds like a song. Don Carroll, eh! El Capitan Don
Carroll."
"But my first name is Henry," he said, faintly.
"'Enry--that's not so good. Don Enrico will do. But El Capitan
Carroll is best of all. I must have it always: El Capitan Carroll!"
"Always?" He colored like a boy.
"Why not?" He was confusedly trying to look through her brown lashes;
she was parrying him with the steel of her father's glance. "Come!
Well! Captain Carroll! It was not to tell me your name--that I knew
already was pretty--Car-roll!" she murmured again, caressing him with
her lashes; "it was not for this that you asked me to meet you face to
face in this--cold"--she made a movement of drawing her lace over her
shoulders--"cold daylight. That belonged to the lights and the dance
and the music of last night. It is not for this you expect me to leave
my guests, to run away from Monsieur Garnier, who pays compliments, but
whose name is not pretty--from Mr. Raymond, who talks OF me when he
can't talk TO me. They will say, This Captain Carroll could say all
that before them."
"But if they knew," said the young officer, drawing closer to her with
a paling face but brightening eyes, "if they knew I had anything else
to say, Miss Saltonstall--something--pardon me--did I hurt your
hand?--something for HER alone--is there one of them that would have
the right to object? Do not think me foolish, Miss Saltonstall--but--I
beg--I implore you to tell me before I say more."
"Who would have a right?" said Maruja, withdrawing her hand but not her
dangerous eyes. "Who would dare forbid you talking to me of my sister?
I have told you that Amita is free--as we all are."
Captain Carroll fell back a few steps and gazed at her with a troubled
face. "It is possible that you have misunderstood, Miss Saltonstall?"
he faltered. "Do you still think it is Amita that I"--he stopped and
added passionately, "Do you remember what I told you?--have you
forgotten last night?"
"Last night was--last night!" said Maruja, slightly lifting her
shoulders. "One makes love at night--one marries in daylight. In the
music, in the flowers, in the moonlight, one says everything; in the
morning one has breakfast--when one is not asked to have councils of
war with captains and commandantes. You would speak of my sister,
Captain Car-roll--go on. Dona Amita Carroll sounds very, very pretty.
I shall not object." She held out both her hands to him, threw her
head back, and smiled.
He seized her hands passionately. "No, no! you shall hear me--you
shall understand me. I love YOU, Maruja--you, and you alone. God
knows I can not help it--God knows I would not help it if I could. Hear
me. I will be calm. No one can hear us where we stand. I am not mad.
I am not a traitor! I frankly admired your sister. I came here to see
her. Beyond that, I swear to you, I am guiltless to her--to you. Even
she knows no more of me than that. I saw you, Maruja. From that
moment I have thought of nothing--dreamed of nothing else."
"That is--three, four, five days and one afternoon ago! You see, I
remember. And now you want--what?"
"To let me love you, and you only. To let me be with you. To let me
win you in time, as you should be won. I am not mad, though I am
desperate. I know what is due to your station and mine--even while I
dare to say I love you. Let me hope, Maruja, I only ask to hope."
She looked at him until she had absorbed all the burning fever of his
eyes, until her ears tingled with his passionate voice, and then--she
shook her head.
"It can not be, Carroll--no! never!"
He drew himself up under the blow with such simple and manly dignity
that her eyes dropped for the moment. "There is another, then?" he
said, sadly.
"There is no one I care for better than you. No! Do not be foolish.
Let me go. I tell you that because you can be nothing to me--you
understand, to ME. To my sister Amita, yes."
The young soldier raised his head coldly. "I have pressed you hard,
Miss Saltonstall--too hard, I know, for a man who has already had his
answer; but I did not deserve this. Good-by."
"Stop," she said, gently. "I meant not to hurt you, Captain Carroll.
If I had, it is not thus I would have done. I need not have met you
here. Would you have loved me the less if I had avoided this meeting?"
He could not reply. In the depths of his miserable heart, he knew that
he would have loved her the same.
"Come," she said, laying her hand softly on his arm, "do not be angry
with me for putting you back only five days to where you were when you
first entered our house. Five days is not much of happiness or sorrow
to forget, is it, Carroll--Captain Carroll?" Her voice died away in a
faint sigh. "Do not be angry with me, if--knowing you could be nothing
more--I wanted you to love my sister, and my sister to love you. We
should have been good friends--such good friends."
"Why do you say, 'Knowing it could he nothing more'?" said Carroll,
grasping her hand suddenly. "In the name of Heaven, tell me what you
mean!"
"I mean I can not marry unless I marry one of my mother's race. That is
my mother's wish, and the will of her relations. You are an American,
not of Spanish blood."
"But surely this is not your determination?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "What would you? It is the determination
of my people."
"But knowing this"--he stopped; the quick blood rose to his face.
"Go on, Captain Carroll. You would say, Knowing this, why did I not
warn you? Why did I not say to you when we first met, You have come to
address my sister; do not fall in love with me--I can not marry a
foreigner."
"You are cruel, Maruja. But, if that is all, surely this prejudice can
be removed? Why, your mother married a foreigner--an American."
"Perhaps that is why," said the girl, quietly. She cast down her long
lashes, and with the point of her satin slipper smoothed out the soft
leaves of the clover at her feet. "Listen; shall I tell you the story
of our house? Stop! some one is coming. Don't move; remain as you
are. If you care for me, Carroll, collect yourself, and don't let that
man think he has found US ridiculous." Her voice changed from its tone
of slight caressing pleading to one of suppressed pride. "HE will not
laugh much, Captain Carroll; truly, no."
The figure of Garnier, bright, self-possessed, courteous, appeared at
the opening of the labyrinth. Too well-bred to suggest, even in
complimentary raillery, a possible sentimental situation, his
politeness went further. It was so kind in them to guide an awkward
stranger by their voices to the places where he could not stupidly
intrude!
"You are just in time to interrupt or to hear a story that I have been
threatening to tell," she said, composedly; "an old Spanish legend of
this house. You are in the majority now, you two, and can stop me if
you choose. Thank you. I warn you it is stupid; it isn't new; but it
has the excuse of being suggested by this very spot." She cast a quick
look of subtle meaning at Carroll, and throughout her recital appealed
more directly to him, in a manner delicately yet sufficiently marked to
partly soothe his troubled spirit.
"Far back, in the very old times, Caballeros," said Maruja, standing by
the table in mock solemnity, and rapping upon it with her fan, "this
place was the home of the coyote. Big and little, father and mother,
Senor and Senora Coyotes, and the little muchacho coyotes had their
home in the dark canada, and came out over these fields, yellow with
wild oats and red with poppies, to seek their prey. They were happy.
For why? They were the first; they had no history, you comprehend, no
tradition. They married as they liked" (with a glance at Carroll),
"nobody objected; they increased and multiplied. But the plains were
fertile; the game was plentiful; it was not fit that it should be for
the beasts alone. And so, in the course of time, an Indian chief, a
heathen, Koorotora, built his wigwam here."
"I beg your pardon," said Garnier, in apparent distress, "but I caught
the gentleman's name imperfectly."
Fully aware that the questioner only wished to hear again her musical
enunciation of the consonants, she repeated, "Koorotora," with an
apologetic glance at Carroll, and went on. "This gentleman had no
history or tradition to bother him, either; whatever Senor Coyote
thought of the matter, he contented himself with robbing Senor
Koorotora's wigwam when he could, and skulking around the Indian's camp
at night. The old chief prospered, and made many journeys round the
country, but always kept his camp here. This lasted until the time
when the holy Fathers came from the South, and Portala, as you have all
read, uplifted the wooden Cross on the sea-coast over there, and left
it for the heathens to wonder at. Koorotora saw it on one of his
journeys, and came back to the canada full of this wonder. Now,
Koorotora had a wife."
"Ah, we shall commence now. We are at the beginning. This is better
than Senora Coyota," said Garnier, cheerfully.
"Naturally, she was anxious to see the wonderful object. She saw it,
and she saw the holy Fathers, and they converted her against the
superstitious heathenish wishes of her husband. And more than that,
they came here--"
"And converted the land also; is it not so? It was a lovely site for a
mission," interpolated Garnier, politely.
"They built a mission and brought as many of Koorotora's people as they
could into the sacred fold. They brought them in in a queer fashion
sometimes, it is said; dragoons from the Presidio, Captain Carroll,
lassoing them and bringing them in at the tails of their horses. All
except Koorotora. He defied them; he cursed them and his wife in his
wicked heathenish fashion, and said that they too should lose the
mission through the treachery of some woman, and that the coyote should
yet prowl through the ruined walls of the church. The holy Fathers
pitied the wicked man--and built themselves a lovely garden. Look at
that pear-tree! There is all that is left of it!"
She turned with a mock heroic gesture, and pointed her fan to the
pear-tree. Garnier lifted his hands in equally simulated wonder. A
sudden recollection of the coyote of the morning recurred to Carroll
uneasily. "And the Indians," he said, with an effort to shake off the
feeling; "they, too, have vanished."
"All that remained of them is in yonder mound. It is the grave of the
chief and his people. He never lived to see the fulfillment of his
prophecy. For it was a year after his death that our ancestor, Manuel
Guitierrez, came from old Spain to the Presidio with a grant of twenty
leagues to settle where he chose. Dona Maria Guitierrez took a fancy
to the canada. But it was a site already in possession of the Holy
Church. One night, through treachery, it was said, the guards were
withdrawn and the Indians entered the mission, slaughtered the lay
brethren, and drove away the priests. The Commandant at the Presidio
retook the place from the heathens, but on representation to the
Governor that it was indefensible for the peaceful Fathers without a
large military guard, the official ordered the removal of the mission
to Santa Cruz, and Don Manuel settled his twenty leagues grant in the
canada. Whether he or Dona Maria had anything to do with the Indian
uprising, no one knows; but Father Pedro never forgave them. He is
said to have declared at the foot of the altar that the curse of the
Church was on the land, and that it should always pass into the hands
of the stranger."
"And that was long ago, and the property is still in the family," said
Carroll, hurriedly, answering Maruja's eyes.
"In the last hundred years there have been no male heirs," continued
Maruja, still regarding Carroll. "When my mother, who was the eldest
daughter, married Don Jose Saltonstall against the wishes of the
family, it was said that the curse would fall. Sure enough,
Caballeros, it was that year that the forged grants of Micheltorrena
were discovered; and in our lawsuit your government, Captain, handed
over ten leagues of the llano land to the Doctor West, our neighbor."
"Ah, the gray-headed gentleman who lunched here the other day? You are
friends, then? You bear no malice?" said Garnier.
"What would you?" said Maruja, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
"He paid his money to the forger. Your corregidores upheld him, and
said it was no forgery," she continued, to Carroll.
In spite of the implied reproach, Carroll felt relieved. He began to
be impatient of Garnier's presence, and longed to renew his suit.
Perhaps his face showed something of this, for Maruja added, with mock
demureness, "It's always dreadful to be the eldest sister; but think
what it is to be in the direct line of a curse! Now, there's
Amita--SHE'S free to do as she likes, with no family responsibility;
while poor me!" She dropped her eyes, but not until they had again
sought and half-reproved the brightening eyes of Carroll.
"But," said Garnier, with a sudden change from his easy security and
courteous indifference to an almost harsh impatience, "you do not mean
to say, Mademoiselle, that you have the least belief in this rubbish,
this ridiculous canard?"
Maruja's straight mouth quickly tightened over her teeth. She shot a
significant glance at Carroll, but instantly resumed her former manner.
"It matters little what a foolish girl like myself believes. The rest
of the family, even the servants and children, all believe it. It is a
part of their religion. Look at these flowers around the pear-tree,
and scattered on that Indian mound. They regularly find their way
there on saints' days and festas. THEY are not rubbish, Monsieur
Garnier; they are propitiatory sacrifices. Pereo would believe that a
temblor would swallow up the casa if we should ever forego these
customary rites. Is it a mere absurdity that forced my father to build
these modern additions around the heart of the old adobe house, leaving
it untouched, so that the curse might not be fulfilled even by
implication?"
She had assumed an air of such pretty earnestness and passion; her
satin face was illuminated as by some softly sensuous light within more
bewildering than mere color, that Garnier, all devoted eyes and
courteous blandishment, broke out: "But this curse must fall harmlessly
before the incarnation of blessing; Miss Saltonstall has no more to
fear than the angels. She is the one predestined through her charm,
through her goodness, to lift it forever."
Carroll could not have helped echoing the aspirations of his rival, had
not the next words of his mistress thrilled him with superstitious
terror.
"A thousand thanks, Senor. Who knows? But I shall have warning when
it falls. A day or two before the awful invader arrives, a coyote
suddenly appears in broad daylight, mysteriously, near the casa. This
midnight marauder, now banished to the thickest canyon, comes again to
prowl around the home of his ancestors. Caramba! Senor Captain, what
are you staring at? You frighten me! Stop it, I say!"
She had turned upon him, stamping her little foot in quite a
frightened, childlike way.
"Nothing," laughed Carroll, the quick blood returning to his cheek.
"But you must not be angry with one for being quite carried away with
your dramatic intensity. By Jove! I thought I could see the WHOLE
thing while you were speaking--the old Indian, the priest, and the
coyote!" His eyes sparkled. The wild thought had occurred to him that
perhaps, in spite of himself, he was the young woman's predestined
fate; and in the very selfishness of his passion he smiled at the mere
material loss of lands and prestige that would follow it. "Then the
coyote has always preceded some change in the family fortunes?" he
asked, boldly.
"On my mother's wedding-day," said Maruja, in a lower voice, "after the
party had come from church to supper in the old casa, my father asked,
'What dog is that under the table?' When they lifted the cloth to
look, a coyote rushed from the very midst of the guests and dashed out
across the patio. No one knew how or when he entered."
"Heaven grant that we do not find he has eaten our breakfast!" said
Garnier, gayly, "for I judge it is waiting us. I hear your sister's
voice among the others crossing the lawn. Shall we tear ourselves away
from the tombs of our ancestors, and join them?"
"Not as I am looking now, thank you," said Maruja, throwing the lace
over her head. "I shall not submit myself to a comparison of their
fresher faces and toilets by you two gentlemen. Go you both and join
them. I shall wait and say an Ave for the soul of Koorotora, and slip
back alone the way I came."
She had steadily evaded the pleading glance of Carroll, and though her
bright face and unblemished toilet showed the inefficiency of her
excuse, it was evident that her wish to be alone was genuine and
without coquetry. They could only lift their hats and turn regretfully
away.
As the red cap of the young officer disappeared amidst the evergreen
foliage, the young woman uttered a faint sigh, which she repeated a
moment after as a slight nervous yawn. Then she opened and shut her
fan once or twice, striking the sticks against her little pale palm,
and then, gathering the lace under her oval chin with one hand, and
catching her fan and skirt with the other, bent her head and dipped
into the bushes. She came out on the other side near a low fence, that
separated the park from a narrow lane which communicated with the high
road beyond. As she neared the fence, a slinking figure limped along
the lane before her. It was the tramp of the early morning.
They raised their heads at the same moment and their eyes met. The
tramp, in that clearer light, showed a spare, but bent figure, roughly
clad in a miner's shirt and canvas trousers, splashed and streaked with
soil, and half hidden in a ragged blue cast-off army overcoat lazily
hanging from one shoulder. His thin sun-burnt face was not without a
certain sullen, suspicious intelligence, and a look of half-sneering
defiance. He stopped, as a startled, surly animal might have stopped
at some unusual object, but did not exhibit any other discomposure.
Maruja stopped at the same moment on her side of the fence.
The tramp looked at her deliberately, and then slowly lowered his eyes.
"I'm looking for the San Jose road, hereabouts. Ye don't happen to
know it?" he said, addressing himself to the top of the fence.
It had been said that it was not Maruja's way to encounter man, woman,
or child, old or young, without an attempt at subjugation. Strong in
her power and salient with fascination, she leaned gently over the
fence, and with the fan raised to her delicate ear, made him repeat his
question under the soft fire of her fringed eyes. He did so, but
incompletely, and with querulous laziness.
"Lookin'--for--San Jose road--here'bouts."
"The road to San Jose," said Maruja, with gentle slowness, as if not
unwilling to protract the conversation, "is about two miles from here.
It is the high road to the left fronting the plain. There is another
way, if--"
"Don't want it! Mornin'."
He dropped his head suddenly forward, and limped away in the sunlight.